Speculation Nation
DIRECTORS: Sabine Gruffat, Bill Brown COUNTRIES: United States, Spain YEAR: 2014 LANGUAGE(S): English, Spanish SUBTITLES: English RUNNING TIME: 75 min
SECTION: International Forum 2015
SYNOPSIS
New buildings standing empty, districts that were never finished, an airport in the desert where no plane has ever landed: Nowhere is the impact of the financial crisis as visible as in Spain. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards lost their jobs at the same time, many of them also lost their homes. However, Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat find people in this speculation and crisis-shattered country who refuse to give up: Normal citizens start squatting buildings, protest camps emerge in front of banks, a new sense of community arises. A hopeful film about the possibilities of creating something new in the ruins.
Perhaps what is most impressive in SPECULATION NATION are the dead moments. The camera crosses empty cities in the middle of nowhere and leaves the viewer speechless. How could this have happened? How could so much money have exchanged hands to build a new town in this place exactly? What kind of an ailing system allows such mistakes?
The strength of the film comes from the fact that these dead cities are juxtaposed with a movement that is very much alive. By protesting, the victims of the crisis who had nothing to do with the mistakes become the hope of a new future. Spanish families move into empty apartments, furnish natural caves for living in. This is the acknowledgement that human, anarchical approaches function better than global capitalism.
SABINE GRUFFAT & BILL BROWN
Sabine Gruffat is a digital media artist and filmmaker living and working in North Carolina. Currently she is Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
Bill Brown is a writer and filmmaker living in North Carolina where he is a lecturing fellow in the Arts of the Moving Image Program at Duke University. He received a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.
FILMOGRAPHY
I Have Always Been a Dreamer (2012), Speculation Nation (2014)
SCRIPT: Sabine Gruffat, Bill Brown PRODUCERS: Bill Brown, Sabine Gruffat CAMERA: Bill Brown, Sabine Gruffat EDITORS: Bill Brown, Sabine Gruffat MUSIC: Stephen Vitiello
PRODUCTION: Gruffat + Brown